


Where Did Everybody Go?

by nOtOk



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Air Temples (Avatar), Airbending & Airbenders, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Corpses, Gen, Genocide, Grief/Mourning, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26798404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nOtOk/pseuds/nOtOk
Summary: If only the avatar had not been caught in that storm. If only he had not been frozen in an iceberg, lost under the waves of the sea.Would the war have gone on for a hundred years? Would the world have been spared from a hundred years of chaos and death? Would things be different? Would things be better?Or was it a mercy that a child was put to sleep and hidden away from the genocide of his people?---For Whumptober. Inspired by the prompt: Where Did Everybody Go?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Where Did Everybody Go?

**Author's Note:**

> Just want to give thanks to my mom friend, [CinnamonRaisinBagel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnamonRaisinBagel/profile), who encouraged me to take up the Whumptober challenge!
> 
> See this Raybay? This right here is your fault. All you. 
> 
> Hey, don't look at me! You started this. I'm just an innocent bystander watching this car crash go down. Totally not the one driving the truck full of explosives. Nope.

Tall cliffs, each rising above a white sea of clouds against a backdrop of a summer sky. Green blessings of earth decorate the proud mountains, all accept one. 

Rough hune rocks, edged and sculpted by the wind over time uncounted, are replaced by smooth structured walls and towers. Here on this peak the children of wind have made their homes. Tall white structures, freckled with windows and adorned at their peaks with pointed hats of blue.

The wind dances among the spires, delighting in the clever airways that bend and twist about the homes of the wind children. Now and again a gust will be taken by surprise; pass through an arch that was not there before or kick up a gathering of black that speckles and smears across silent courtyards.

Little flashes of colour catch the delight of the wind. Loose orange fabric waves to the wind and ruffles with the breeze. The winds wave back.

A gust, in its throes of play, tugs too hard and reveals a stain of red. Quickly the wind lets go of the fabric, allowing it to fall back down and recover what it had kept hidden from sight. Twisting away from the concealed red, the gust returns to its game, eager to forget what it does not want to see.

Something in the winds shifts. A current of air, a cold neighbor from the south, comes breezing through the passes between the mountains and up toward the white spires with their blue tops. 

Winds twists to see, drafts of air turn to welcome a new friend. The cold wind carries on its back wings. Bright orange, weary and worn by wilderness but not bleached by the sun, ride the wind until the current cannot bear its weight any longer. Orange glides down to perch upon a natural turret in the cliff. Wings fold and the wind rejoices.

A wind child! A new playmate!

The child looks to the white towers and buildings just above him. Home, his grey eyes say. 

Familiar, the winds reply. 

They brush over the child’s worn and dirtied clothes and trail about a bare head marked by a blue arrow. This wind child they know. A friend of their nature, a hidden power of order nestled in their spirit. What wonderful games this child has played with them. How glad they are to have this child back with them in the home of the southern winds.

The child moves, calling their help. Orange wings snap out from their staff. The child leaps out into the wings and into the winds’ embrace. Eagerly the air currents rush to lift him up. 

With his breath he urges them to carry him home. Gladly they comply.

There is something, however, that causes the wind to stutter. A catch in the child’s breathing, a deep sadness.

Did not this child leave here with a wind master? Yes. An air bison, great masters of the sky and winds. Oh how the air currents loved to dance and shift through its fur. How glad were the gusts of wind to obey the mighty commands of such creatures. 

But the scent of the master has long faded from the wind child. The air currents understand. They send warm breath as comfort to the wind child. They know the child’s loss. They miss the masters of air too.

Gently they release him upon a smooth stone within his home. The wind child nimbly touches down upon the earth. Tired eyes, grey like the sky cumbered by clouds soon to break with rain, search about. 

The child opens their mouth, moves forward, lifts their hand. But this time they do not call the wind.

“Hello?”

The voice echoes. A breeze, glad to have sound again, carries the call throughout empty stone halls.

“Is… is anybody here?” The child calls again. They are moving now. Moving forward, looking all about for signs of life.

A friendly current rushes by, catching at the child’s clothing. Others join in, hoping to entice the wind child to play with them.

The child steps out of the flurry, continuing on his search for others of his kind. 

“Hey?!” The call is a mix of puzzlement and worry. The winds shift anxiously as the child moves forward, deeper into the white temple.

“Ha, ha, very funny.” The child says, trying to play off a smile. “Good hiding. You guys got me. You can all come out now.”

Silence continues. No warm smile nor flash of orange comes to greet him. 

“Huh…” the child speaks to no one (one one but the wind). His naive spirit keeps him from thinking the worst. “That’s weird. Where did everybody go?”

No draft or wisp of air will answer.

The child turns a corner, stepping into a larger courtyard.

Grey eyes widen in horror. The winds shutter and flee. A stench, mix of rot and fire, descends upon the child. The smell of death and decay eagerly fill the child’s lungs as he gasps.

Red, dried into the earth. Red soaked into orange fabric. Red painted in cracked and crusty strokes across white skin and whiter bones.

Black ash, bloated from its consumption of flesh, scatters itself across corpses and courtyards.

The wind has deserted this place. An ere quiet keeps all within this place still.

The child cannot think, cannot move, cannot speak. Only stare. Stare at his lost family. Stare at his lost friend. Stare at his lost home.

White and red and black.

A cawing sound breaks the silence. The child flinches, then looks. 

A lizard crow looks back. Black feathers beat at the air. Black scales scrape across the ground. It stares with shining eyes at the boy. Curved claws flex, digging into flesh. The scavenger creature sits atop a pile of huddled figures, corpses of children clinging to each other in death. Their bodies half burned by fire and half baked by sun.

The lizard crow watches the living wind child a moment more, then turns back to its feast. Its sharp beak pecks downward, spearing a glossy orb sunken into a fear stricken face.

The living child screams.  
A flash of white and the child is no longer a child. In his place are two spirits as one; order and human, bound and intertwined. The being of power calls to the wind.

And the wind answers.

Winds of hurricanes, winds of winter storms, winds of raging forest fires, winds of monsoon, winds of cyclones. They come to the being of power. They hear his despair, his anger, his anguish, his fury.

These winds, they do not comfort. He does not ask them to. 

They destroy. 

Everything.

The being of power cries out more, his entwined soul begging for more.

The water replies. It freezes and drowns.

The earth replies. It shatters and crushes.

The fire… the fire sputters out. It suffocates on the wind, is drench by the water, is smothered in the earth.

….

Far off to be safe, but near enough to see, something watches the destruction from the shadows of a cave where the divide between worlds has been weakened. 

“My, my.” Says the unknown creature, using the stolen face of a fair woman to look out across the destruction. Many legs click against stone as the creature crawls out of its cave. “What a tragic face that is.” 

The creature blinks and the woman's face is replaced with that of a baboon. The being twists the baboons features into a cruel grin, white fangs flashing .“I’m sure the child won’t mind if I take it for myself.”


End file.
